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Madison Taylor was born in 1990 in Athens, Georgia to Ralph and Janet Taylor, two Kinfolk affiliated with a caern several miles away from the city. While her parents, both owners of a local diner catering to college students, funneled money back to the caern and made contacts for the Garou, Madison grew up outside. When she wasn’t running errands for the Garou or learning about her heritage – her family descended from a local hero in the town and on the sept, a Child of Gaia called Calm Mountain – Madison took to the outdoors and the hills and mountains north of the city. She and her older brother David eventually learned a bit of climbing and made camp with some of their friends and other Kin from the sept when they came to town.

As Madison grew older, her parents and their cousins at the caern tried to foster her love for the outdoors into a passion for it as a way of life. While Madison never took it up outside of a hobby, she responded to the threats that Gaia and her treasures faced and was easily motivated to take a more active role in protecting them. In high school Madison began her first tepid steps into what she thought might be a career as an activist or in public service. She took part in speech courses, environmental science electives, and started volunteering for a variety of environmental groups aimed at preserving the land. When she made it to her senior year she was accepted by the hometown University of Georgia, she wound up beginning with a major in Environmental Studies and a minor in Political Science. By then she was set on professional activism, hoping her degree would give her the knowledge to speak credibly as a force for protecting Gaia and an agent for the Garou.

A few months into Madison’s term the Great Recession hit and her family started having trouble getting by and backing the sept. Madison’s brother was able to help around the shop, and Madison herself found ways to make money on the side while she was taking classes. On a particularly fateful day, Madison took a few hundred dollars to model for a number of painters and photographers in the art department. Never a shy one, Madison enjoyed the attention and made it a regular affair. Although she was uninterested in “professional” work, a friend in the department shot a brief video and gave her some demo shots if she ever changed her mind. Madison’s studies remained her primary concern, and she kept up good marks as she made it through class. In her Junior year she was elected Chair of the local Sierra Club and began making connections she hoped would lead her to a position once she had her degree. A few months before she could graduate, though, Madison’s father suffered an accident that left him unable to work. With only low or unpaid positions being offered, Madison had to find more lucrative employment than advocacy to keep her family afloat and keep contributing to her friends and cousins on the sept.

After failing to find serious work, Madison accidentally dug up the folder the art students made her and contacted a college friend about seeing if anything could come of it. A week later she got a call from a local clothes chain called Anne’s for a catalog, and after a brief talk with the regional manager Madison pulled in a few hundred dollars for a day of shooting. After a few more months of small jobs, Madison got her big break on the local scene with a beach swimsuit shoot a few hours away for a magazine in Atlanta. While on-site near a protected portion of the coastline, Madison got an idea and convinced some of the crew to get a few phone cameras of her just talking about the preserve nearby and what made it important. That night she uploaded the video as well as several photos from the shoot and a link to the preserve’s website to a blog she’d written in since she graduated. She didn’t pay it much more mind until the end of the weekend, when she got a call from the non-profit maintaining the coastline telling her they had a surge in hits and donations, with commenters noting that they had come to the website from Madison’s blog. It had never occurred to Madison that activism could go hand in hand with a hobby and what had been a part-time job, but once the preserve offered her a chance to shoot at some of their other sites with better equipment she decided to give it a go.

Over the next year and a half Madison would become an ever-more successful model and advocate under her sage name Taylor Anne, bringing in more money with her primary job and raising more for various charities and organizations on the side. As she became a more known quantity about the Athens area, she began to make the rounds as a guest of honor at low-budget local functions and a promoter for various causes in the city. She parlayed her local prominence into helping the family business recover from recession, with the diner finally coming back to its former earnings as her father recovered and was able to return to work. While he had been somewhat uncomfortable with Madison’s career, it was he who suggested that she try and go bigger. Madison had gone about as far as she could in a small city like Athens, and if she wanted to do her best for herself and Gaia she needed to go elsewhere. After a few weeks of planning Madison settled on Sweet Shelley, booking an apartment in Uptown with her savings in the hopes she could find an agent or manager on sept. With a fond farewell to her family, friends, and cousins from the sept, Madison made her way north in the hopes of making it big.

Personality: Madison has a bit of the typical southern girl to her – friendly, fun, down-to-earth, gregarious and outspoken, and very direct. She’s not one to get too worked up about appointments and deadlines, and her crews often joke about her perpetual lateness on sets when her job isn’t on the line for it. She’s the sort who goes to bed early and wakes up late, but she works hard in between. Madison is a loyal friend and is prone to give people lots of chances – a definite sign of her Tribe – but she won’t be quiet when someone messes up.

Goals: Madison is in Sweet Shelley to take her dual career to the next level, and at the end of the day speaking up for Gaia’s natural places is her true love. She’s also excited to be going in closer proximity to a sept. She knows about the Garou but has only rarely met them, and she wants to see what it’s like to be around them much more often. I mean, what girl hasn’t wanted to date a Werewolf at some point? :P